Page 158 of Filled

“Yes.” Brady, no hesitation.

“Yes,” Eli says, and I say it with him.

“Yeah,” Cruz breathes. “Yes. Unanimous. Damn.” He laughs, shaky. “Look at us. Five for five.”

“What does marriage even mean for us?” Brady asks. “Legally there’s no version of this.”

“Legally, no,” Eli says. “But people build structures. Trusts, power of attorney, medical proxies. There are ways to bind lives together that don’t require a courthouse or divine entity to bless it.”

“You’ve researched this?” I ask.

Eli shrugs. “I may have researched this.”

Cruz whistles low. “Coach has been googling how to marry four people. I’m never letting that go.”

“I googled estate planning,” he defends.

Cruz chuckles and, in true Cruz fashion, wiggles his brows at Eli as he retorts. “Romantic estate planning.”

“Kids?” Dakota asks.

She’s gone pale, and her hands are folded so tight on the table her knuckles stand out white. “I never let myself want that,” she says into the silence. “Ever. What did I know about mothers except how to survive one? But you asked what I want long-term, and if I’m being honest, all the way honest—” Her voice thins. “Someday. Maybe. With people who’d actually show up.”

“We’d show up,” Brady says, hoarse.

“Every day,” Eli says.

“Kid would have four dads and the toughest mom in Virginia,” Cruz says. “God help their teachers.”

Dakota makes a sound that’s half laugh, half sob, and covers her mouth.

“We’re not figuring everything out tonight,” I say. “Any of it. One dinner isn’t a blueprint. But it’s out there. It’s real.”

“It’s real,” Dakota repeats.

Eli raises his glass. “To real.”

Five glasses meet over the table.

Outside, the town is quiet and cool, the kind of small-town main street where the shops close at eight and the only sounds are a passing car and music drifting from a bar down the block. Nobody here knows us.

Dakota steps onto the sidewalk and I reach out and take her hand.

In public. In the open. Under a streetlight, where anyone driving past could see.

She freezes and then stares down at our linked fingers. And then her face crumples and she squeezes so hard it hurts. “We can do this here,” she whispers.

“We can do this here,” I reply.

We walk. Five people down a small-town sidewalk, the shape of us shifting like water—Dakota between Eli and Cruz, a hand in each of theirs, then tucked against Brady’s side, then her fingers finding mine again. Cruz slings an arm around Brady’s shoulders. Eli keeps a hand at the small of Dakota’s back like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Tonight it is.

We look ridiculous. Obvious. Exactly like what we are, and for one hour in a town sixty miles from home, nobody has to care.

Under the streetlight outside the closed hardware store, Cruz stops, catches Brady’s jaw in one big hand, and kisses him. Slow.In full view of the empty street and the lit windows and God and everybody.

Brady makes a sound against his mouth like he’s been hit—like being kissed where people can see is a violence and a gift at once. When Cruz pulls back, Brady’s eyes are shining. He doesn’t wipe them.

“All my life,” Brady says. “Nobody ever kissed me like that before.”